Civics 101 Spring Graduation and Recognition

Belatedly (sorry!) here's the Civics 101 Graduation for the Spring Civics 101 Class. The enthusiasm of the classmates and the special recognition of Civics Class Coordinator Vickie French -- a $1,000 contribution for a tree and a plaque in her name at the Celery Fields -- are remarkable. The Civics item comes up quite early - about the 2 minute mark.

Civic Literacy and Ill-literacy

Lynda Seidl shared a link to another Civics Literacy Test:

Full Civic Literacy Exam (from our 2008 survey)

Are you more knowledgeable than the average citizen? The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%. Can you do better? Questions were drawn from past ISI surveys, as well as other nationally recognized exams. LINK.

What's disturbing is the remarkably dismal performances of college educators and elected officials. Is literacy an endangered species?

Celery Fields coming into its own

We've covered the development and opening of The Celery Fields as a park and a habitat - here's a blog post on Sarasota Patch about how happy people are finding new things to do there.

When is property not properly taxed?

Richard D. Wolff on the improprieties of how property is taxed:

An older civics conversation in Sarasota

Jeff LaHurd has a terrific piece about how Sarasota County owes its independence to a split from Manatee County in 1921, to form its own more perfect union. It's not an entirely unfamiliar ring to it:

In September, Edwards, Sarasota's first mayor, who was in charge of gathering relevant data, reported: "The territory comprising the proposed new county is paying considerably more into the county treasury in the way of taxes than it is receiving back; the area which comprises one-half of the present county is represented by one commissioner, while the other half is represented by four." More...

A terrific photo of the temporary old courthouse accompanies the text -- they had angle parking downtown even then - who knew?